Welcome to our Farm! Little stories about our life as organic farmers raising a family on an island in the middle of Lake Champlain

Monday, August 18, 2014

Journal Post for week of August 18th

Volume IX, JOURNAL 10

August 18, 2014

Blue Heron Farm Journal

***FRESH CERTIFIED ORGANIC CHICKEN AVAILABLE at the FARM TODAY - $5.50 a lb***

So what’s happening on the farm this week?

Week 10JThere are many things going over the
internet these days - conflicts, death, ice buckets, beaches, and stories about
not letting your children become farmers.These days the work is hard and long.We wake up early, work past dark, break for meals and play and keep on
keeping on.I found Delia's flip flops
by the wash station today, she probably flung them off while picking wildflowers
for the fundraiser we had here yesterday for Food for thought.I helped weed Sadie's little garden that she
made all herself.I see the little tykes
cars strewn between the farmstand and the cherry tomato hoophouse.I found a little basket of eggs collected on
a tour that my girls did yesterday with some visitors.I hear the rooster crowing.We pick 70 pints of cherry tomatoes.Our steadfast volunteers pick the green beans
that will be on your plates today.We
ate eggs from chickens that we had as chicks and ham we had from a pig we had
as a piglet.I snacked on tomatoes,
split cucumbers in two in the field and ate one - their refreshing snap and
crispness a nice break in the picking.I
scout out the corn with Adam to hopefully to pick later in the day.Our girls had yogurt for breakfast from our
sweet cows Annie and Maggie.Sadie found
it to be a bit chilly this morning, and she grabbed her wool hat made with
these hands made from the wool from the backs of our sheep.The coolness of mid august was welcome while
picking this morning for this community we belong to. Our girls were so excited
to show everyone that came yesterday the beauty and fullness of this scared
place - explaining along the way why we raise that vegetable, why we raise
sheep and chickens and cows , how all the animals and veggies and people need
each other to grow. This is our office - this is what pays the bills.Things are not all roses on small diversified
family farm.There is a lot of hard work,
stress, dirt, and anxiety. But this farm
is what gets us out of bed every morning.The joy that is in farming along with all the yuck - is a wonder.Sometimes you have to take a step back and
see the forest for the trees.

Our girls will be
themselves when they grow up - our hope is to help them build their toolbox of
skills: mentally, physically and spiritually - to be who they are.Their occupation will be to be good,
passionate, caring citizens - knowing they are part of a bigger community.Knowing where their food comes from and how
important food, shelter and clothing are to everyone. When I was a kid, I
wanted to be an astronaut.I learned to
work hard, being caring, brave, loving and passionate. And I know I am those
things today and I express those things through my daily life- that’s what I
hope defines me not necessarily my occupation.I hope the same for my girls to be who they want to be and not have an
occupation to define them. They will be independent.They will know how to grow, harvest and
prepare their own food.They will be
able to know how to read the weather, the land and drive a tractorJ
Farming is more than a profession. Farming is a way of life, it is not 9 to 5,
it is dynamic. Being a farmer is who you
are.

I saw the following
article and it spoke to me and other mama farmers I know.My girls know where their food comes from,
they know the work that goes into farming and the flexibility of us going with
dirty knees and all to a baseball game or dance practice.Farming is a way of life that is hard but so
rewarding. I have enclosed the article for you to read.Be brave. Wear stripes and polka dots.Be home before dark to put the baby chicks in.
get dirtyJ

""Don't Let Your Children Grow Up
to Be Farmers." That was the title of an op-ed piece in the New York Times circling
around my Facebook feed this week. You may have read it yourself, but if not here's the gist: There is no
money in farming with integrity as a small business model. It's a
nearly-impossible way to make a living. Those organic veggies at your local
farmers' market, the CSA share you may or may not have invested in, the truck
hauls to busy city centers to deliver box club splits... It's a dog-eat-dog
shit show, a constant competition between "hobby" farms (some are
recreation of the wealthy for land tax breaks in the same farmer's market as
commercial growers) and nonprofit farms who have boards of directors to hand
out new tractors instead of resorting to begging a bank for a loan. It was a
good article and as a good point was made. Farming as your sole source of income
is no way to get rich and getting harder all the time, even among this recent
food movement. And that was why the title was what it was, to grab your
attention and point out how hard the much-applauded small farm business is.
"Don't let your children grow up to be farmers" was a warning and an
earnest one.

The article ends with issues farmers need
to fight for, like loan forgiveness for college grads (I personally would love
this one) who pursue agriculture and better wages for every part of the
food-growing system. Like I said, it was a powerful article and well written,
and I agree with him on all points but one:

Let your children grow up to be farmers.

Let them know what it is like to be free
from fluorescent lights and laser pointer meetings. Let them challenge
themselves to be forever resourceful and endlessly clever. Let them whistle and
sing loud as they like without getting called into an office for
"disturbing the workforce." Let them commute down a winding path with
birdsong instead of a freeway's constant growl. Let them be bold. Let them be
romantic. Let them grow up not having to ask another adult for permission to go
to the dentist at 2 p.m. on a Thursday. Let them get dirty. Let them kill
animals. Let them cry at the beauty of fallow earth they just signed the deed
for. Let them bring animals into this world, and realize they don't care about
placenta on their shirt because they no longer care about shirts. Let
them wake up during a snowstorm and fight drifts at the barn door instead of
traffic. Let them learn what real work is. Let them find happiness in
the understanding that success and wealth are not the same thing. Let them skip
the fancy wedding. Let them forget four years of unused college. Let them go.
Let them go home.

Farming never has been, and never will be,
an easy life but for many it is an easy choice. For me it was the only choice.
Perhaps that is what it takes? Being a farmer means wanting to do it more than
anything else. It means giving up things other people take for granted as givens,
like travel and the latest fashion, new cars and 401k plans. It means making
choices your peers won't understand, your family will disapprove of, and other
farmers will scoff at. It means making a decision and owning it, really
owning it the way few people get to own anything in their lives anymore.
Let your children grow up to know this responsibility. Let them literally put
food on the table, lift up their bootstraps and learn how much effort a life
worth living entails.

I have been living on this farm full-time
for nearly two years, and it has never been without worry. But that heavy
blanket of anxiety is full of many, tiny, holes that let in brilliant beams of
light, as many as there are stars! And those pieces of light I have reached
have changed me so much. They are mountaintop rides on a draft horse, meals I
knew as chicks and seeds, and finding a spiritual home in the everyday work and
rhythms of my life. The version of me who was too scared to farm would
certainly be more solvent, but she wouldn't be happy. She wouldn't know how to
hunt deer, ride a horse, plant a garden or butcher a chicken. It is only in the
last few decades of abnormal history that these skills were considered
recreational or outdated. And perhaps that New
York Times writer will find himself in a much better place
financially when local food goes from being a novelty of the so-inclined to the
staples his community depends on when gas prices, natural disasters, political
climates or any other disruption in the cattle cars of modern civilization
start to hiccup.

And that may be the best reason to let you
children grow up to become farmers: they can feed themselves. They can achieve
the most basic of human needs in a society clueless about how to take care of
themselves without a car and a supermarket. Becoming a farmer isn't in
financial fashion right now; that is sadly true, but it will be again. As long
as people need to eat there will be a business in doing so, and it's up to each
farmer to find his or her niche, celebrate it, unapologetically accept good
money for it, and keep doing it far past the point of reason. Any son or
daughter of mine that dared to be so bold would not be discouraged from facing
the world with such fierceness for simplicity. Antlers on fire can set a lot
more holes in a dark blanket.

Let your children grow up to become
farmers. There is a surplus of mediocrity in this nation and a deficit of
bravery. Let your children grow up to be farmers. Let them be brave. " -Jenna Woginrichat Cold Antler Farm.

What’s in the share this week:

Thislist is what is in afull share this week.Things may change between Monday and Thursday
and Individual and Salad share will get differing amounts and may not get
everything on the list. Onions, Lettuce,
Herbs, Corn (fingers crossed), Green Beans, Cucumbers, cherry/full size heirloom
tomatoes, hmmmm

Farm Fresh Raw milk for Sale

We are very lucky to have two milking
cows - Annie and Maggie - both give us plenty of milk each and every day and we
would like to share that with you and anyone else would like to have raw
milk.We sell it $5 a half gal.We also can do a sliding scale if needed for
the milk.You can buy milk at CSA pickup
or anytime out of our barn fridge next to our house at 34 quaker.

***FRESH CERTIFIED ORGANIC CHICKEN AVAILABLE at the FARM TODAY - $5.50 a lb***

Eggs for sale We have the pretty
girls’ eggs for sale – these are free-range, certified organic chicken eggs
that are brown eggs– with the brightest yellow/orange yolks you ever seen.The eggs are $5.00 a dozen.$3.00 half dozen